Can cities and other subnationals create a new path of opportunity from a challenging first week at COP29?

By Yunus Arikan, ICLEI Director of Global Advocacy and Focal Point to the LGMA

COP29 delegates awoke on Sunday – the official mid-point of COP29 – to a dark, windy, shaky day, in both climatic sense outside in Baku, as well as political sense inside the COP29 Blue Zone.

Where do we stand on the negotiations as well as on the main priorities of the LGMA? Things fall somewhere in the realm of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Below is an assessment based on coverage by the Earth Negotiations Bulletin/IISD.

The bad: Week 1 has melted into Week 2 

UNFCCC technical decisions are covered in two tracks: one, the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI), covers implementation of previously agreed decisions – and the other one, the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) explores new topics. Each body has different discussion topics and some joint agendas. 

Each year, these bodies meet for two weeks in June in Bonn and for the first week of COP at the end of the year, and these meetings are known as the SBs. The negotiations in the second week of COP are led by the COP Presidencies. 

SBs end with the adoption of conclusions at the closing plenaries, usually on the Saturday night of Week 1. But not all SB conclusions mean agreement. A SB conclusion may also mean that there are several points of discussion where Parties do not agree. 

There are then two options; either the Presidency takes these discussions to newly formatted groups with new facilitators or SB can decide to continue to discuss these agenda items into the next SB meeting in the next June in Bonn.  

On late afternoon Saturday, the UNFCCC announced that on Monday 18 November  Closing Plenary Statements would be delivered, but this was assuming that adoption of conclusions would be finalized on late Saturday night. But Parties were so disunited on so many discussions anything may still change – for good or for worse – until (or if and when) on Monday 18 November with the COP29 President presenting his vision at the plenary and SB61 Plenary meets for closing statements .

More of the bad: At the “finance COP,” key negotiations on a finance goal have not yet concluded 

The New Collective Quantified Goal (NCGQ) on climate finance is the new scale of annual finance from the global North to global South by 2030, replacing the current figure of $100bn/year, with an expectation that it will reach to the trillions of USD per year. 

There is a draft text by co-facilitators, but without agreement if it is a negotiation text or not; Parties will continue to discuss this in Week 2 of COP29 in Baku.

The very bad: Negotiations on how to implement the outcomes of COP28 seem to be on the road to disappointment 

The discussion on how to implement the outcomes of first global stocktake (GST) after COP28, which will be extremely instrumental in more ambitious, inclusive and multilevel NDCs 3.0 by 2025, will continue in Week 2 but without any conclusions from SB.

While it is good that negotiations in Baku will still continue so that we can expect some guidance from COP29 towards COP30, lower levels of government officials were not able to clean the text sufficiently, and Ministers may not be able to reach an agreement on the long and confusing text, which could mean a weak decision or even none at all. 

The ugly: Parties fight back to keep adaption on the agenda in Week 2

By Saturday night, Parties were not able to reach an agreement at SB61 on a global goal on adaptation, and the COP29 Presidency, who have made the NCGQ their priority, asked SBs to continue these discussions in Bonn in June 2025 at SB62. 

However, Parties pushed back, given how important this is to vulnerable countries in the global South and after a battle, the COP29 Presidency confirmed that Week 2 discussions at COP29 in Baku will also include adaptation. This unprecedented back-and-forth may damage trust from some Parties in the COP29 Presidency, despite the Presidency’s good intention to prioritize finance in Baku first.

The very ugly: Mitigation Work Program negotiations postponed till June

Sharm El Sheikh Mitigation Ambition and Implementation Work Programme (MWP) has always been one of the toughest topics because this is one of the key battlefields of fossil-fuel phaseout and other contentious issues on GHG reduction commitments. MWP in 2024 was particularly important for LGMA because this year the UNFCCC negotiators focused on urbanization, which was an unprecedented positive, based, in part, on all the LGMA achievements since our recognition in the Paris Agreement. 

Since the beginning of MWP SB61 negotiations, fantastically co-facilitated by Germany and South Africa, leading groups of the global South LMDC, Arab Group, Africa Group, with China, S. Arabia and Zimbabwe as their spokespersons, respectively, had a very tough stance to start a negotiation under this item. 

Over the course of four Informal Meetings, several countries within those groups such as Indonesia, Gambia and Egypt raised some additional voices but those were not enough to make a change. Since there was no agreement in Week 1, co-facilitators drafted a SB61 conclusion that will enable this discussion to continue in Week 2 of COP29 in Baku. But the wall of Global South resistance was so powerful that they succeeded in pushing the agenda to the next session at SB62 in June 2025 in Bonn. 

This means there will be no ministerial MWP discussion in Week 2 at COP29 in Baku, which may be a big problem for global North Parties because they will lose an important battleground to push for ambition in Week 2, and they may be face even greater pressure under NCGQ and GST negotiations in Week 2  

The very, very ugly: Just fighting ourselves?

We are all aware that the biggest barrier for progress in global climate negotiations is the lack of trust among big powers, and the sad reality is that many of the core issues of the climate agenda are a victim of other geopolitical battles. 

From the moment COP29 began – with an eight-hour delay caused by a dispute over the inclusion of trade discussions – we began to see cracks in the multilateral process. 

There is a serious leadership void from the global North due to domestic turbulence, particularly from the US, EU Commission and Germany, which puts into the question the possibility for substantial commitments for the global finance goal. It is difficult for current bureaucrats or Ministers from global North attending COP29 to take climate finance from billions to trillions, even if they wish to or believe personally in the effort, because they may not be the ones to deliver these at home in the coming months or years. 

Those following only MWP negotiations at COP29 may find it very hard to understand the very harsh positions of the global South to block any progress. The disastrous failure of MWP agenda at SB61 can be understandable from the point of view of the global South, as a balancing victory in response to their loss in the COP29 agenda debate, which may make both powers equalized at the beginning of the 2nd week COP29 in Baku. 

From a geopolitical point of view, we can also expect that this growing tendency of weakened global mechanisms can also remind national governments that local and regional governments will always be there to help, support and collaborate at the local, subnational and national level and initiatives like CHAMP will be a perfect fit for such collaborations. 

However, in practical terms, this means the hard-won positive spirit towards the multilateral process over these years is being destroyed … dismayingly easily. 

And the ones who are really desperate in this lose-lose game are the ones who are eager to deploy the transition to a zero-carbon economy and reduce vulnerabilities to climate disasters.

The good? Amid the challenges, a new path of opportunity for cities and other subnationals

How might these challenges create a new opportunity for the COP29 Ministerial Meeting(s) on Urbanization and Climate Change to free urbanization from all this diplomatic arm-wrestling? 

How might we use this moment to transform our advocacy into an all-hands-on-deck, positive, forward-looking, holistic, cooperative, and standalone agenda under UNFCCC?

In the UNFCCC negotiations, for decades, cities and later on subnationals in the broader context, were considered as a taboo for both by global North and South, with the perception that this agenda will weaken their mitigation related negotiation positions against each other. 

The ADP3.2 Workshop on urbanization in Warsaw at COP18 in 2013 was the first effort to change this mindset, and paved the way for our first recognition in the 2015 Paris Agreement. The keynote presentation at that workshop in my capacity as the LGMA Focal Point concluded with the proposal of bringing urbanization ministers to UNFCCC space, so that the discussion can be shifted from “us vs. they” into  a joint agenda. 

With the introduction of “urgent need for multilevel collaboration” in the 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact at COP26, starting with COP27, our discussion has focused on urbanization as a means to reach to mitigation and adaptation targets collectively while securing livelihoods of our citizens in all human settlements. 

The 2024 focus of the Mitigation Work Programme on cities, buildings and urban system arrived in such a good atmosphere and especially the MWP meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh in October 2024 was 180-degree opposite of Warsaw 11 years ago. 

This was the reason why we were aiming to ensure a bridge between SB61 negotiations in the Mitigation Work Programme in Week 1 with the 3rd Ministerial Meeting(s) on Urbanization and Climate Change on 20 November in Week 2. As MWP negotiations started to transform into a very destructive mode, LGMA delegates began approaching negotiators from both global North and South to invite them to decouple urbanization from the overall MWP battle. 

Building on LGMA proposals, the latest Informal Note by Co-facilitators includes “collaboration…..including through multi-level cooperation mechanisms and approaches,” as giving us the hook to connect to Week 2. 

At the COP29 Presidency Townhall on 15 November, LGMA delegates directly asked the COP29 President to use the Urbanization Ministerial as a vehicle to rescue urbanization from the MWP so that we can build a much more positive agenda in the COP29 negotiated outcomes. 

At the last MWP informal, Egypt, being a member of LMDC, Arab Group and Africa Group, explicitly stated that MWP dialogue on urban systems was so successful that these positive conclusions should not be wasted. 

In response, the Swiss delegation proposed to S.Arabia and China that if they agree, they are happy to park paragraphs on MWP 2024 Dialogue to a separate section as topics which have no disagreement. 

Other delegations like Bangladesh, Gambia, Australia, Indonesia, Brazil, Canada from both North and South have already expressed similar statements. 

It is highly possible that with the collapse of MWP track, all those delegations, and many other friends of multilevel action, in particular those that endorsed CHAMP, may now be more vocal to step up and explore options for bringing MWP outcomes to the Urbanization Ministerial. 

This bridge will particularly help us to promote widely that urbanization is beyond mitigation and therefore can not be kept closed to only mitigation-focused discussions. We can also benefit from the outcomes of the second Culture and Climate Ministerial Dialogues on 15 November, who also wish to create a space for themselves. 

Thus, as we return to the COP negotiation rooms the Blue Zone on Monday, we can now start to advocate to all friendly UNFCCC Parties to support a single sentence in the COP29 negotiated outcomes text that asks for a joint SBI/SBSTA dialogues to seize opportunities to enhance successful delivery of the Paris Agreement goals through multilevel action and urbanization, to be presented and agreed at COP30, that takes into account the outcomes of both MWP 2024 Dialogues (UNFCCC report of the Dialogue is already out and it is not blocked by the collapse of SB61) and Urbanization and Climate Change Ministerial. 

Such a decision would likely be one of the brightest achievements of COP29 in Baku. It is a decision that can also be actively supported by especially Brazil as the host of COP30 so that they don’t have to negotiate but just deliver, as well as both by Australia and Türkiye who are both candidates to host COP31 and also endorsers of CHAMP and actively engaging in the MWP agenda. 

This argument is strongly supported by the statements from US city and state leaders at COP29 that while the US can once again be pulled out of the Paris Agreement under the 2nd Trump Administration, but thanks to IRA and other bipartisan tools, impact on national climate action will be limited. This means, the main impact of the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will be felt by cities and regions in the global South because no US federal money will flow to UNFCCC climate funds. 

This proposal could provide multiple significant benefits at once: as the joint success of previous, current and future COP Presidencies, as a direct support to national efforts in all countries at a time of global uncertainties, and also to help to build global solidarity in the long run, as a unique offer from COP29 in Baku towards COP30 in Belem.

Finally, the real good: COP29 Truce Deal is signed by 100+ nations and 1000+ partners, including LGMA

On 15 November Peace, Relief, and Recovery Day at COP29, the COP29 Presidency announced that a total of 132 countries have joined the COP Truce Appeal, an initiative which is also supported by more than a thousand international institutions, private sector representatives, civil society organizations, and public figures. The “COP Truce” urges nations to halt military operations during the month of the conference. Hungary, Malta, Monaco, Serbia, Turkiye and Mexico are the only ones from the global West or global North that have endorsed this COP29 initiative. Colombia, who also launched a World Coalition for Peace with Nature, is also among 132 nations that endorsed COP29 Truce Appeal.

Deep breath: Here comes Week 2

Since SB61 negotiations extended to so late in the early hours of Sunday morning, instead of convening an in-person stocktake plenary To present Week 2 plans, the COP29 Presidency circulated a letter to all Parties and Constituencies, which explains how they will lead the negotiations in the second week of COP29, including new negotiations themes, who will facilitate these negotiations groups and whether and how COP Presidency texts for COP cover decision(s) will be developed.